Week of 10/26/2020

 Let’s Just End Presidential Debates
– by David Matthews 2

Four days prior to this column posting, Narcissist President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden had their second and thankfully final presidential debate.

This commentator’s first thought when hearing that there would be a second and final debate was to ask, “Why bother”; and the first thought after the debate was to ask, “why did they even bother”.

It is a question that I am sure many people had going through their heads as well.  Why did they even bother going through with a second debate?

Why did they bother with a debate, given that one of the required participants is an orange-skinned malignant lying narcissist who wouldn’t know what the truth was even if it wore a swimsuit and a Miss America sash?  Someone who lies about the time of day, then doubles down on the lie and accuses you of not knowing what time it really is and then blames Democrats, the media, and China for the time being wrong and that he know more about the time of day than anyone else.

Why did they bother with a second debate after the first one was an unbridled failure that descended into two old guys trying to over-talk the other; one by design and the other defensively?  Maybe people expected the debacle to break down into fisticuffs, except that the orange-skinned narcissist is so physically “fit” that he would most likely lose his breath just trying to get halfway across the stage, and this was before it was revealed that he got COVID.  And, besides, Space Cadet Bone Spurs isn’t a man of action.  He isn’t even a man.  He is the ultimate chickenhawk in a party full of chickenhawks who lets others fight his battles for him.

Maybe people expected Narcissist Trump to somehow be honest, or at least better behaved, with a mute button looming over his head.  Well, “better behaved” was more like it.  But the lies still lingered.  Joe Biden was still debating against a self-promoting clown act who said whatever he wanted to say, true or untrue.

I could understand why Narcissist Trump thought he needed a second debate.  He desperately needed a “trump” card to catch Biden.  He thought he could trap Biden with some concocted story about Biden’s son (the one that’s still alive) and Ukraine, even though that subject is precisely what got Narcissist Trump impeached last year.  Narcissist Trump needed a win.  He didn’t get it. 

But why did Joe bother to partake in this debate?  He really had nothing to gain from it.  It’s not like we all didn’t know about the orange clown act.  He out-did Narcissist Trump in the competing town hall meetings.  He hurt Narcissist Trump’s ego by having better ratings.  So there was nothing more that he could gain from this.

Both camps claimed victory in this debate, of course.  Some of them for the lamest of reasons.  Those that thought Narcissist Trump “won” because he wasn’t the mad dog lunatic from the first debate are perhaps the most pathetic of the lot.  To award a “victory” simply because their narcissistic orange-skinned man-child savior “behaved himself” is the very essence of a participation trophy.  You know, those cheap things that red-hats love to decry and complain that led to the downfall of civilization.  Giving Narcissist Trump a “win” simply because he behaved himself is a participation trophy.

And if people were somehow expecting this debate to “move the needle” towards one camp or the other, it didn’t.  We are just days away from the 2020 Con and/or Coup and pretty much people know who they are voting for and why.  There are no real surprises this time around.  No “October Surprise” that changes things.  The hyper-extreme-partisan divide is such that we are literally at the zero-sum extremism that I keep telling people about.  If you are a red-hat-wearing cult-follower of Narcissist Trump, then nothing that can come out will change your mind about him.  And if you are against the cult and you are voting against Narcissist Trump, then nothing will change your mind either.  Now it’s just a matter of numbers and how many people show up at the ballot box and how many electors will each side get.

So... why the hell did they even have this debate?

Seriously, why?

Did the so-called “Commission on Presidential Debates” somehow feel emasculated after that sham of a first debate?  Were they determined to supposedly “right” themselves after the originally-planned “second” debate was cancelled because COVID-carrying Narcissist Trump refused to have a virtual debate?  Were they afraid they’d have to give space and airtime to those third-party and independent candidates? 

Yeah, I can see that now… Joe Biden going up against Jo Jorgensen, Howie Hawkins, Jesse Ventura… and Kanye!  Don’t think so.

Let’s get brutally honest here… I think it is high time that we retire the so-called “Commission on Presidential Debates” along with the debates themselves.  They really have no place in this hyper-partisan environment, never mind given who one of the participants are.

It’s one thing to have a debate during the primaries and caucuses.  It gives the potential voters the chance to compare and contrast between all the wannabe candidates.  But I dare say that everyone’s minds are pretty much made by the time October comes rolling in.  Between the conventions and the incessant news coverage and the oversaturated daily phony polls and the goddamned ads, we pretty much know everything we need to know about the candidates.  If there are any “undecideds” at this point, I submit to you that they really wouldn’t be voting anyway.

The only way that the presidential debates would truly have any value now would be if they allowed the third-party and independent candidates in.  Not as a “B-side” debate but right there with the two dominant parties.  Give them all a chance to compare and contrast, just like the primaries and caucuses.  But, given that the “Commission” is made up exclusively of members of the two dominant parties, that will never happen.

The presidential debates were born in a time when there were candidates with honor and integrity, who could calmly and politely discuss the issues.  Who didn’t interrupt each other or spread one lie after another.  From a time before 24-hour news channels and daily fantasy polls trying to determine who wins before a single vote is cast and always ending up a horse-race.  Those days are gone.  So too should the debates.

 

Week of 10/19/2020

Beware The Con
– by David Matthews 2

I had gotten a call near the end of the day at the mailroom that I was in charge of a few decades ago.  The guy was excited to let me know that I had won a free cruise.  Not only did I win a free cruise for two, but it covered all expenses including transportation to and from the port and a hotel stay.  Plus, I was entered into a cash prize contest.  There were people hooping and hollering in the background as he listed all the things that I had won… in the contest that I didn’t remember entering.

Yes, I had entered my name in a few local contests.  “Win this car” sort of contests that were held at the mall just next door to my workplace, but I never put in for a free cruise.

But the cheers and exciting news didn’t stop.  The guy continually rambled on about the things that I had won in this contest.  Soon I was told that I had actually won not one but two all-expense-paid cruises!  Isn’t it great?  Isn’t it exciting?  And all I needed to do was to pay a fee upfront, and could I please give them my credit card or bank account number so they can process this and I can go on my exciting cruise.

My mind started kicking in.  Warning bells were ringing loudly in my head.  If I truly won this contest, a contest that I did not remember entering and they wouldn’t say which one it was, then why did I need to pay them upfront for this “free” cruise?  Plus, how did they get the mailroom number?  In the contests that I had entered, I had never given them my work number.  Ever!  It was always the home number.  I didn’t even have a cellphone at the time!  (Yes, it was that long ago.)

I knew it was a scam.  I told them no.  I should have just hung up, but I was telling myself as well as them that I was refusing this “exciting” windfall.  I needed to tell myself no as they still tried to get me to give them my financial information.  I found out later that I was one of the lucky people who managed to avoid being scammed by this fast-talking phony contest crew.

That was almost three decades ago.  I stopped entering into local contests afterward when I learned that con artists were using those “win this car” contests to get contact information.  How they got my work number, though, remains a mystery because they somehow knew me by name the minute I picked up the phone.

A few weeks prior to this column posting, a close family member had told me that they had gotten a call from their TV service provider with a great deal for them, and she wanted my input on it.  It was a two-year program to get all the premium movie channels for just $99 a month.  All this person had to do was to pay $300 for the first three months and then the rest of the two years will be $99 a month, and she’d have all the premium channels.

Something wasn’t right about it.  I was hesitant to tell her to go ahead, but she really thought it was a great deal for her.  She really wanted this.

The next day I asked her if the $300 would be taken out of her monthly bill or if they wanted the money upfront.  She texted back around lunchtime to tell me that they wanted to be paid in eBay gift cards, and she was planning on going to the nearest Dollar General store to buy them. 

Those same alarm bells were ringing loudly in my head.  I immediately got on the phone with her and told her that this was a scam and to not do it.  She said that it was okay, that this was a special promotional program with her TV service and eBay.  She even talked to their billing people and they said it was legitimate and she got an email confirmation for proof.  I told her to send me the email.

When I got home that afternoon, I went into overdrive.  Oh the email looked legitimate.  It had her quirky account name and the provider’s logo and a legitimate-looking verbiage.  In addition to the “great deal” she was offered, they threw in a Visa gift card once the first transaction is completed.  The warning bells in my head were ringing so loudly that I couldn’t hear anything my relative had to say.  She was ready to go get those eBay gift cards and make this happen.

Most people don’t know this, but I’m an old school netizen from the days before the World Wide Web.  I had taught myself to spot scams and spam by looking at the raw data of the messages.  Stuff that you don’t normally see from your email program like Outlook or Thunderbird or Gmail.  Each email has a header code that traces the message back from its point of origin through all the various servers to its final destination.  You could lie about the “sender”, but you could not lie about that header code.

If the confirmation email was from the TV provider, then that would be the first address in the header code.  It wasn’t.  I traced it to a European remailer service notorious for spammers.  There was no trace of the provider’s address at all in the message.  I then had her send me an email from her last billing statement.  I traced the header of that email back to the provider.  I told her the “confirmation” email was a scam.  She didn’t believe me.  I did a WHOIS search on the address of the sender.  Again, something most people wouldn’t know to do.  It wasn’t registered by either the provider or eBay.  She still didn’t want to believe me.  She finally got online with the customer service department of the provider.  They had confirmed what I was telling her.  The “salesman” didn’t exist.  The “promotion department” that she was supposedly communicating with didn’t exist.  It wasn’t real.  There was no “promotional deal”.  It was a scam.

I had saved this family member from losing at least $300 to a con.

Prior to this, I had searched the offer on my smartphone.  It took me all of fifteen seconds on Google for me to see that it was a scam that was sweeping the country.  Two law enforcement agencies were investigating it.  A regional Better Business Bureau was getting inundated with complaints.  The provider itself was investigating it, although apparently not so hard because it’s at least two years old.

I had gotten permission to share this event to you provided that I didn’t say who she was or who the provider was.  I can say that this family member that I had just stopped from being scammed is someone that I have always considered to be a sharp person.  She’s always looking for a good deal.  That’s why she thought this offer was legitimate.  She really wanted it to be.  She’s also a bit stubborn.  I had to go above and beyond to prove to her that she was being scammed, because this is someone who really doesn’t like admitting she’s wrong about anything.

Sadly, she’s not the only one.

Con artists on all levels are able to pilfer people out of their money because they promise something that their victims want.  A great deal, a great financial program, a timeshare, an extended car warrantee, a robust retirement program… they don’t promise the moon, but they will offer up just enough to make you want it to be true.

I keep telling people to watch the CNBC series “American Greed”, which talks about various cons and con-artists and other kinds of criminals that defraud us on all levels.  We’re taking “get rich quick” people, corrupt politicians, abusive corporate executives, so-called “financial advisors” and “brokers”, liars and thieves all around, and, yes, that list will someday include the current President of the United States.

If you watch the series enough times and you see the various forms of con games going on, you can see a pattern.  You see what they offer and understand that it’s not legitimate.  You also see the people who fall victim to these cons.  They are not idiots.  They aren’t generally gullible or naïve.  Only a few of them are feeble-mined or addled with age.  They’re basically like us.  They are the people that we work with, the people that we go to church with, the people that we see at the gym or the local grocery store.  They are our neighbors and our friends and our relatives, and even ourselves under any other circumstance.

And I’m not going to say that I’m special or immune to these things.  I’ve had my share of falling for cons as well, only mine often involve more matters of the heart (or matters related to it).  Hell, I only knew that the gift card thing was a scam because it had been played so many other times by fake utility bill collectors and fake jury duty callers.  It’s been all over the TV and online.  It was the same kind of con with just a different twist.  Instead of using fear, they dangled an offer that they knew their victims would want.  After all, who wouldn’t want to get something far more for seemingly less money?

There is a simple secret to how these con artists are able to get to us: they tell us something that we want to hear or something that we want to believe is real.  That’s it.  That is all that it takes.

Let’s get brutally honest here… we want to believe that there is a secret to wealth.  That we can make a lot of money in a short period of time without living like a hermit.  That we can build up a retirement fund or a collage tuition fund or whatever kind of fund while still keeping up with the Joneses.  That we can make a fortune in the stock market in just a few days.  That we can somehow get the most of a program or service for the least amount of money.  That there is a shortcut to getting into the college or university of our choice.  That a TV personality who couldn’t even manage a casino without it going bankrupt could somehow govern a nation, reverse a supermassive budget debt, provide superior healthcare, correct a trade imbalance, and also get a massive ocean-to-ocean border wall built and have Mexico pay for it.  That the good-looking girl… or guy… is really interested in us and not in the money that we provide.  (See?  I told you that I’m not immune to this.) 

We really *want* to believe these things to be true. 

It’s just that… they’re often not.

That’s why it’s up to us to remember that.  And why we have to be looking out for these cons and their false promises.

A true promotions department will not specifically call you first.  You have to contact them.  They really don’t want to give away things for free or at a discount unless they have to.  They also will not ask that you pay for something with a third-party gift card, especially something that can leave no traceability and cannot be reversed once given out.  It’s one thing to use gift cards for your own use, like to pay for a subscription to Netflix or Hulu.  It is another to be convinced to pay a bill or to bail someone out using it, especially if the person insisting on it claims to be a police officer or clerk of court.  The person insisting on it is looking for something they can cash in fast and have no record.  That’s not how utility services or government entities operate.

We want to believe that people are honest and legitimate and upfront.  And some people are.  We just have to make sure not to fall into the schemes of the ones who aren’t.

 

Week of 10/12/2020

It’s Still About Voting Your Conscience
– by David Matthews 2

Eight years ago, I wrote an election-eve article telling my fellow Americans that they need to not only vote in 2012, but to vote their conscience.  Sadly, I knew it would never really convince anyone, because a lot of us back then had already early-voted, and the rest of us pretty much made up our minds as to who we were voting for.

This article is being posted one month prior to the 2020 Presidential Election and/or Coup, with millions of Americans already early-voting either in-person or by mail in numbers unheard of before.  But there is still time for my words to get into the heads of my fellow American voters before they cast their vote between this article’s posting and Election Day.

First and foremost, I am asking those of you who are registered to vote to please do that between now and Election Day.  Whether it is by early voting, vote-by-mail, absentee vote, or showing up on Election Day and waiting in line to cast your vote, please do.  I know that it’s difficult because of the global pandemic still going on, that that’s primarily on us and those who failed to do their jobs at all levels of government.  But if you are an American and you are registered to vote, then it is your responsibility as an American citizen to vote.

Second, I am asking again that you vote according to your conscience.  I know that is difficult given the options before us.  I know there are people who are firmly in the cult of Narcissist President Donald Trump.  And, yes, it is a cult, even and especially if they themselves don’t see it as such.  And there are those who do not like former Vice President Joe Biden and/or his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris.  The so-called “Bernie Bros” have once again reared their ugly heads and have it in their minds that anyone except Senator Bernie Sanders will not do.

Look, Bernie Bros, I get it.  You want your guy in.  You want his ideas enacted.  The problem is that there was a time when that was possible.  But that time is over.  Bernie didn’t get the nomination.  Even he has said that it’s time to vote for the one that is on the ballot, and, yes, he is stumping for Biden in a way that he never could do four years ago.

And that brings me to the third thing... Yes, vote.  Yes, vote according to your conscience.  But also ask yourself this question that I asked eight years ago:

Are you willing to live with the consequences of your vote?

I have come across a few folks who knew what kind of person Narcissist Trump was even in 2016 and still actively voted for him because they did not like Hillary Clinton.  If you are one of them, then you share a portion of the blame for what followed.  The ineptitude, the broken treaties, the ego-wall that was supposed to be paid for by Mexico but instead is being paid for through our tax money, the broken families, the ineptitude concerning the global pandemic, the economic collapse still going on today... that is on you just as much as it is on Narcissist Trump and his Trump Party.

Voting has consequences.  Not voting also has consequences.  A majority of registered voters failed in their responsibilities as Americans back in 2016.  It was not a horserace as the media has always proclaimed it to be.  Half of the registered Americans did not vote at all.  They defaulted their choice to those that did vote, and that included the ones that voted for third-party or independent candidates.

Imagine what would happen if even half of the non-voters from 2016 actually voted.  If they did, then it is entirely possible that there would have been someone different in the White House four years ago and I don’t necessarily mean Hillary Clinton.

But, of course, they didn’t vote.  So they had to endure the horrors and travesties of Narcissist Trump and his army of enablers and sycophants along with the rest of us.  Something for them to think about this time around.

Let’s get brutally honest here... each of us as registered voters have a chance in these next few weeks to do something about Narcissist Trump and his criminal operation.  Something that the courts have not been able to do.  Something that Congress has not been able to do.  We are the only ones that can.  If we do not like what Narcissist Trump and his cohorts have been doing, we can and we must vote them all out of office.  That is our responsibility as Americans.

Yes, Narcissist Trump and his gang of thugs and terrorists can try to rig the elections.  They’ve been trying to stop voting by mail, even though it’s been going on since the Civil War without any problems.  There are threats of voter intimidation by self-appointed “poll watchers” determined to prevent votes for anyone other than Narcissist Trump.  But they only win if we let them.  They are not the majority in America.  They never have been.  They are a very active and very vocal minority who have figured out that if we don’t vote and they do, they win.

That’s the secret to their dominance.  If we don’t vote and they do, they win.

Can you live with that?  I can’t.  I haven’t.  That’s why I vote every time.

In all the years that I’ve been able to vote, this commentator only made the mistake of voting party over principle once.  Ever since then, I have voted according to my conscience and I have not regretted it even the slightest.  They may not have won, but I never lost sleep over my choices.  And the same can be said about my choices this year. 

I will not tell you who I will be voting for, but you can guess who I will certainly not vote for, and my choices will leave no doubt as to who will not get my vote.  And I know that, win or lose, my conscience will be clear.

What about the rest of you?

 

Week of 10/05/2020

POTUS COVID Thoughts
– by David Matthews 2

Narcissist President Donald Trump has the COVID-19 virus.

That little piece of pre-morning news popped up three days prior to this article’s posting.

On October 2^nd, Narcissist Trump was taken to Walter Reed hospital in his taxpayer-funded helicopter and checked into his luxurious taxpayer-funded medial suite that resembles more like a luxury hotel suite than a hospital room.

The con artist who tried to con the world that the global viral pandemic was “a hoax” that affects “virtually nobody” and would “magically go away”; the scam-king who mocked masks and people who wore them; found out the hard way the he could not scam a virus.  He could not convince it that it was “a hoax”, and it certainly did not “magically go away”. 

I guess that also makes Narcissist Trump a “virtual nobody”.

That said, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

I Do Not Wish Him Misery Or Worse – There have been plenty of people who oppose Narcissist Trump or have criticized him publicly or whom are on his enemies list that have felt compelled to say that they don’t want him to suffer greatly from the coronavirus or that he die from it.  And, yes, this commentator is one of them.

Let’s get brutally honest here... I do not want Narcissist President Donald Trump to be seriously ill or to die from either the COVID-19 global pandemic or from the effect brought about from contracting the virus.  I wish him a speedy recovery.

I say this because I want him healthy so he can be defeated in the November Election.

I do not want him to use coronavirus to get so much as one sympathy vote.  Not after the months of ineptitude and incompetence and all the science-denying and all of the mask-hating and the negligent genocidal conduct from him and his hench-people.  Not after all of the “hoax” rhetoric and the talk about it magically going away.  Not after the snake-oil cure-alls that he touted in front of cameras.  Not after the ever-increasing number of people who have gotten sick and were killed from this virus because of his ineptitude.  He does not deserve even one sympathy vote after all of that.  Not one.

And I certainly do not want him to die!  Because when it comes to rich and/or powerful criminals, death is the great absolution in both our society and in our broken and failed justice system.

Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, was a convicted criminal for being in charge of the then-biggest corporate failure in America almost twenty years ago.  Then he died.  And, under Texas law, his conviction was expunged because he supposedly wasn’t able to appeal it.  Let’s not forget serial predator Jeffrey Epstein.  His suicide, as suspicious as it was, certainly absolved him of his criminal activities.  Funny how that only seems to apply to rich and/or powerful people.

Worse, should that happen to Narcissist Trump before he is voted out, he would become a martyr to his cult followers.  They would canonize him to sainthood and carry on with all of the chaos and insanity that he mastered in his name for generations to come.

Death erases all scandals, all failures, all crimes in our society, especially those that were never brought to trial.  We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, even if they were the worst evil in life.  I do not want that for the orange-skinned man-child.  He does not deserve it.

COVIDiocy Knows No Bounds – When the news of Narcissist Trump’s ailment first broke, I had a fleeting hope that perhaps people would take the global pandemic more seriously now that their self-appointed messiah got it.  At the very least to see more people wear masks in public, knowing that even Narcissist Trump wasn’t immune.

But... nope.  The Dead Idiots Walking kept on going out without masks or practicing social distancing.  So pervasive is their delusions that even their savior being stricken by coronavirus won’t sway them.

Even worse, the conspiracy idiocy is going right along with it.  Now the tin-foil nutcases are claiming Narcissist Trump’s infection is either an assassination attempt directly from China or part of the Q-Anon plan to trap Hillary Clinton.  Oh, and the progressives are joining in on the lunacy too, saying Narcissist Trump isn’t really sick, he’s just using it to cancel or delay or postpone the election, or else to get attention off his failure at the recent “debate”/troll-off with Joe Biden.

Listen, folks, I’ll admit that even I found it a little coincidental that the orange one would suddenly get COVID just as the dung was hitting the fan between news of his taxes and his trolling the debate and just the fact that he is simply the worst.  The timing is certainly suspect.  And, of course, he is first and foremost, a self-promoting clown act.  He loves to put on a show.  But... I’m going to err on the belief that it’s simply bad luck for him.  There are too many people that were around him that are suddenly coming down with COVID as well, including his current wife, for me to think that it was staged.

Don’t Believe The Hype – Having said that I don’t believe the conspiracy theory that Narcissist Trump’s sudden COVID turn was staged, I also don’t fully believe what is being said from Narcissist Trump’s people about his condition and how bad it is or isn’t.

This is a man who is all about stagecraft.  About presenting the illusion that he is the apex human being.  Physically fit, even when he is obese.  Mentally sound, even when he’s having trouble pronouncing words like “Yosemite”.  His doctors all claim that he is in the best physical condition of his life, even while he’s chomping down on fast food and putting around on his golf cart.

He’s not the only one, either.

Remember Herman Cain?  Screwed over and screwed out of the 2016 campaign, but still sucked up to Team Narcissist and ended up with a cushy cabinet position.  Earlier this year he attended one of Narcissist Trump’s super-spreader rallies.  No mask.  No social distancing.  Cain got COVID.  Cain went to the hospital.  All the while he was posting updates saying it wasn’t anything serious, that he was making a miraculous recovery and he’ll be back to work real soon.

And then Herman Cain died.

Funny thing, though… the former Godfather’s Pizza owner and one-time talk radio personality still kept posting tweets even after he died.  Turned out he wasn’t posting any of the messages at all.  That was from his family.

Stagecraft, folks.  Illusions and exaggerations to make things seem not as bad as they really are until they can’t fake it anymore.

Even Narcissist Trump’s public transit to Walter Reed was all about stagecraft.  It was timed so not to upset the stock market.  There was some speculation that he was wearing a portable oxygen device hidden in his jacket that was looped behind his ear and hidden behind his face mask.  Whether or not it’s true, it emphasizes that he wanted to give the appearance that he was fine and strong.

Is Narcissist Trump doing great?  We won’t really know.  Even if or when he leaves the hospital, we will not really know just how bad it affected him.  Because the illusion is what matters to him.  The illusion that he is the apex human being, even when he is not.

Finally… it’s still on him – I’ve said this previously and I’ll say it here… I don’t laugh when I hear anti-mask and “COVID hoax” people end up in the hospital with COVID anymore.  I get pissed.  I get pissed because before that person ends up with COVID, they get to spread mistrust, lies, resentment, and general distrust that continues to make the matter worse.  That certainly holds true for the Narcissist-In-Chief who is currently reaping what he and his people have been sewing for months.

COVID may have come to America from China by way of Europe, but the ignorance and negligence and ineptitude is all ours.  From the man in the Oval Office down to the red-hat Kool-Aid drinkers in their pickup trucks, the failure to heed science, to pander to “hoax” talk and prop up fake cure-alls is all ours.

No, this is not karma.  Karma is lazy and even more inept than an IRS run by blind sloths.  Think more of a casino was not owned by Donald Trump.  In that casino, the house always wins.  No matter how many times you win, no matter how much you win, if you keep playing, then the house will eventually win it all back.  That’s what happens when you gamble.

Narcissist President Donald Trump and his gang have played fast and loose with the pandemic for months.  They gambled with every public appearance without masks.  They gambled with every snake-oil treatment they promoted.  They gambled with every super-spreader rally.  They gambled with every statement making fun of masks, with their push to re-open the country, with their refusal to help those businesses and families still needing assistance through the collapsing economy.  They gambled, and they gambled, and they gambled, and now they lost in a personal way.  Whether or not they lose even further is up to them.